


For Want Of A Chromosome

by Phrenotobe_Archive



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: FTM Robert, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:04:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe_Archive/pseuds/Phrenotobe_Archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosalind and Robert are barely different, yes, but for all the random chance in the world, things have a way of equalizing themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Want Of A Chromosome

**Author's Note:**

> _When I was a girl, I dreamt of standing in a room looking at a girl who was and was not myself, who stood looking at another girl, who also was and was not myself. My mother took this for a nightmare. I saw it as the beginning of a career in physics._
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> I liked this quote, but wondered how it applied to Robert, so I decided to do something about it.

Rosalind frowned as she tapped the sheet of paper.  
“We need a certificate of your birth, Robert.”  
It was for nothing unusual, but it made his features come over with a frown.  
“Well you know where it’s been left,” he mutters, “And it’ll be a wash trying to get it now.”  
She hummed thoughtfully, adjusting her weight from one foot to both, and put a daring hand on his shoulder.  
“We could,” she muttered, “We can.”  
He shrugged off her touch, folding his fingers in his lap.  
“We shouldn’t.” he echoed, “I can’t.”  
She started at that, her head raising to give him a long glance. He’s ill at ease in a way she’s never seen him before, and a spark of it echoes in her. Empathy is a resource she doesn’t draw on, but you don’t need a twinly connection to see the upset in his frame.

“Why ever not?” she says, her mouth a thin and purposeful line, “Get your things, Robert..”  
He sighs, a little overlong, though he does as he’s bid, taking his jacket and putting it over his broad, handsome shoulders with the fatigue of inevitability.  
“If I must,” he says, wearily, and it’s the first time since he’s come through that she’s seen him so. She lifts her chin.  
“Retrieving documents is not a crime,” she says, curtly.  
“I know,” he replies, “It just seems like a bother.”

The trip itself is less like an outing and more like a weary traipse between a series of grey-shifted portals, and at every one she braces herself for a hemorrhage, a handkerchief braced between upper lip and the lower edge of her nostrils, just in case. Robert, poor, dependable Robert, is already bleeding freely and threatens to drip onto his collar if it goes over his chin. She takes a moment to dab at him, with a fondness Rosalind Lutece, the great scientist, would never show for Columbia’s public.

“I can see my writing-desk,” he murmurs, glancing over her shoulder, and he gently pushes her backwards through the next one, an arm moving swiftly around her waist to catch her as he steps through. “Careful!”  
Rosalind is used to the reeling motion, the sea-sick not-rightness of transferring tangentially through another plane, but Robert’s shoulders are set at ease despite his gentle ministrations toward her form. Her dizzy mind constructs an outing at the park while he moves with purpose, partly an escort and partly an aide. She clutches a little hard to his arm, her fingertips pinching his sleeve for purchase. Rosalind is quite all right, and if not then she will be.

“You look pale,” he notes politely, his other arm drawing open the cabinet in the corner of his room and shifting through the papers. She sniffs, partly to discourage the thought, and also because she feels a touch of wetness there. Her hand raises quickly to her face.  
“Why would that be?” she asks, sardonically, and he pauses his rooting through personal detritus to fish his own handkerchief, a large and un-laced square, and put it to her face.  
“Thank you,” she mutters. He smiles, taking a moment to focus just on her, drawing out the chair behind the desk and letting Rosalind sink into it with as much grace as she can muster.

“Put your feet up, dear sister,” he says, glossing over things as is his wont, “I should be done in a moment, and then we can sit together and wait for the next portal home.”  
She allows herself the luxury of putting both hands to her head, to assuage the dizziness. This is his home, and to the same extent hers, and though he’s at ease in the place, she’s able to understand a lot more of the extent of his adjustments the longer she stays there.  
Robert’s private room, so much like hers, feels uncomfortably closed in. She dabs at her philtrum carefully and checks the cotton square for fresh damp.

“To the left of your hand, brother,” she says, daring a glance towards the open cabinet doors. His shoulders stiffen, almost imperceptibly, before he reaches slowly, overly so, to pick it up.  
“Quite right,” he says mildly, “Thank you.”  
She shakes her head and then wishes she hadn’t. “It was visible from my seat,” she retorts.  
He hums an agreeing note, slipping it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

“I don’t see how it will be any help,” he says, softly, “Considering my origins.”  
Rosalind frowns as he draws closer to sit on the edge of his desk, shuffling aside a book - her book - no, in this reality, his book, to perch there with one leg propped up on the other at an angle.  
“I have no clue as to what you’re talking about,” she says, folding her hands on the desk primly, closing her eyes against a remembering that could not possibly exist. He chuckles.

“We have a shared history,” he says, and the heel of his shoe taps against the wood of the desk, loudly. “A shared dream.” He reaches out to put a hand to her jaw, “Chin up, sister. It’s nearly time to leave.”  
She gazes at him, squints at his chipper manner.  
“You’re referring to physics?” she says.  
He shakes his head.  
“The other dream. About standing in a room,” he prompts.  
Rosalind’s mouth twists just a little wry.  
“When I was a girl, I dreamt of standing in a room,” she begins.  
“Looking at another girl who was and was not myself,” he adds, and pats his pocket, before sliding his hand in to retrieve the certificate and lay it out in front of her, face down.  
“If you want to look at this, you may.” he says, carefully, putting his palm flat over it before she manages to pick it up, “But promise, whatever happens, that I will always be your Robert.”  
“If I must,” she says, and then meets his eyes. “You are Robert Lutece. My brother, Robert.”  
“Thank you.” he says, and hops off the desk, wandering away but not too far.  
He plucks apples from a fruit bowl in the corner, two in each hand, and begins to juggle them.  
She pinches the bridge of her nose between her eyes, lifting the paper in two fingers and turning it over. Old and creased, the corners curled by his pocket, she reads the surname Lutece and a statement of birth that one small, red-haired baby had been successfully delivered, gender F, chosen name Rosalind.

She puts her palms down flat on the desk, framing it but not touching it.  
“Robert?”  
“Yes,” he replies, letting the apples drop one by one on the floor and not bothering to pick them up, “What is it?”  
“What is it,” she echoes, “Don’t be absurd. There is another certificate in your pocket.”  
He retrieves a coin from somewhere about himself and quirks an eyebrow.  
“Heads, it’s mine,” he says, “Tails, it’s yours.”  
He takes his time walking over, and perches once again on the corner of the desk. She accepts the coin, gazing at him steadily like a challenge.  
“Give me your jacket,” she orders firmly. “And find another chair. You’ll have your coat-tails in the inkwell.”  
“Heads,” he whispers, “I’m calling it.”  
He shrugs off his tan jacket, laying it across his lap.  
“There’s nothing else in there, you know.”  
Rosalind nods, and casts the coin into the air, watching the arc and let it fall onto the table without catching it.  
“I don’t know.” she says, dipping her head to look at it, putting her elbow on the desk and propping up her chin with the back of her hand.  
“And besides, this proves nothing.”  
He allows himself the glimmer of a smile.  
“Here’s my jacket,” he says, laying it over the table, certificate, and coin.

**Author's Note:**

>  _A philtrum is the dipped space under your nose and above your lip._  
>  _The two people I’m basing him off are Jack Bee Garland, and Alan L Hart. You may find their wikipedia pages here_  
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Bee_Garland  
>  _and here._  
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_L._Hart  
> 


End file.
